End of 2022

And so passes 2022. For me, as for nearly the whole world post-pandemic, a pretty nondescript year, I think.

It started well, with a lovely road trip, and I finished it with another one-dayer yesterday: Bhatinda falls, Topchanchi lake and Maithan - with the same team of boys plus one (Koushik, Swarnava and Pratyush, besides Firoz) which, too, was perfect. The boys discovered for me how good the music system in my car was. Good adda, good food, good sleep...

In between, there were two traumas: once we nearly lost poor Bheblu in mid-February, and then my mother in late September. But God was kind, so we all survived.

The highlight of this year, of course, was Pupu staying with me for a while, first time after the lockdown of 2020. This time it wasn't forced, though. Otherwise, with a few short breaks, it was work, work, work. Luckily, I enjoyed it for the most part.

Some of my favourite old boys have been having a tough time, so my prayers go with them for a better new year.

My prayer for myself: please God, keep me far away from people who don't like me but fake it for a while.

As usual, I am already and eagerly looking forward to the next mid-February break. Even if it is only vacationing in Delhi.

I have often written more feelingly and at considerably greater length about the Christmas-New year season. See, for instance, Santa Claus is coming to town and Behold, there cometh the Lord. No point repeating myself. 

December 1989

18th December. Alas, it seems we won't have a proper winter this time round at all! It became comfortable enough by mid-November, but even today the maximum has touched 26 celsius, while the minimum yesterday was barely 12-13. This can be called winter in Mumbai, Kolkata or Chennai maybe, but certainly not here.

I was re-visiting the memories of December 1989, when I was 26, exactly the age my daughter is now. More and more I love to make these mental comparisons. I had joined St. Xavier's School as a teacher the previous year, and helped very greatly to organise their silver jubilee celebration: they have airbrushed me out of their official memoirs, the idiots, imagining that that way they can actually erase history! In 1989, they were paying me a very modest salary, which was shored up just a little bit by the extra I was earning from private tuitions - many of my less gifted contemporaries were making considerably more then, and it would be more than a decade later that I would manage to draw ahead of them. But I was enjoying myself hugely. I was my own man, helping out with the family finances; we had just finished building (the first floor of-) our own new house, and that December, I floated the idea of taking some boys and colleagues on a school excursion. First time ever for our school. 'Who will take the responsibility?' asked Father Wavreil the headmaster, thrilled but wary. 'I will, of course,' I assured him, and so it was done. Even the railway booking was done through my father's journalistic connections. We went travelling for about a week, I seem to remember, visiting Hardwar, Hrishikesh, Lakshmanjhula, Dehradun and Mussoorie, staying and moving around very comfortably on just seven hundred rupees per head, which was even in those days a shoestring budget, and still managed to return a bit to every boy afterwards. 

I remember we got off the return train early in the morning, and the headmaster was waiting for us. He took a suitcase from my hand, and as I shook hands with him, crying exultantly, 'Father, I did it!' He laughed like a boy and said, 'Yes, you said that you would do it and you did it!' (for the illiterate, that was an impromptu quote from Bernard Shaw's play, Pygmalion). If his successors can read and are reading this, I hope they feel ashamed to realize how far they have fallen, and just why I quit. This was a headmaster: I couldn't tolerate lesser creatures. 

One reward was that some parents later came to see me and said, 'Sir, given the glowing reports we are getting from our sons, and the dirt-cheap way you managed to do it all, why don't you arrange a trip like that for us parents?' and another was that some of those boys (ICSE 1991) looked me up much later and declared, 'Sir, we have travelled much, far and wide, but never have we enjoyed a trip as much as that one!' It is a pity that I was such good friends with my senior colleagues like Uday Roy and Shanti Biswas in those days, and they have all found it preferable to forget me or badmouth me... I still wonder what they got out of it.

But Pupu, note well, I was still poor then. So you have time to make a solid career for yourself, see? All that matters is that you want to, you have faith in our Maker, and you are giving of your best. And remember, I did have lots of fun even though I was poor!  

Books I recently enjoyed

In the chapter titled On Books in To My Daughter, I expressed the fervent hope that my daughter would grow up into a good reader. That prayer has been richly answered, and as I have mentioned before, Pupu has of late turned into my main supplier of highly interesting books from many different genres, not excluding books on cookery! 

This time round, we went shopping to Pupu's new favourite haunt, The Book Shop on Lodi Road, inside the Embassy of Georgia complex. Tiny, yet very enticingly stocked. It was a delight to pore over all kinds of new titles, many by authors I hadn't read before, and to see a place where people of different ages came solely to explore and talk about books - made me feel intensely for the umpteenth time that I, sadly, live for the most part in a village, where reading is anathema to highly 'educated' people.

Within a span of about ten days, I have hugely enjoyed reading four books in quick succession. One was a Bengali volume, Goyendapeeth Lalbazar, by serving IPS officer Supratim Sarkar, from Ananda Publishers. A compilation of twelve bizarre criminal cases solved by the detective department of the Calcutta Police, once proudly called a close second only to Scotland Yard. Well written - even a bureaucrat can sometimes write well! - and a valuable contribution, maybe the first ever, to the history of crime detection in our country. Mr. Sarkar deserves the kudos and thanks of many.

Two more detective books - fiction this time round, but based on a lot of hard historical facts, and both very interestingly set in India, during the late years of the British Raj. One, The Last Kashmiri Rose, based in south Bengal 1922, at an imaginary military outpost called Panikhat: quite a gripping page-turner with a most unexpected and rather sinister twist in the tale, very expertly written with excellent and accurate historic details woven in, though I have no idea where the writer found hilly country fifty miles from Calcutta, and the biggest mistake was not making one mention of the biggest thing that had happened over the previous year, namely Gandhi's Non Cooperation movement which had nearly brought the whole administration to a grinding halt. The other was The Rising Man, written by Abir Mukherjee, who grew up in Scotland, whose protagonist is Captain Sam Wyndham, survivor of the trenches during the First World War, now employed by Calcutta Police on the express recommendation of the legendary commissioner Charles Tegart, though the writer has got some details wrong or confused: the name was Tegart, not Taggart, and he was only a 'Sir', not a 'Lord' at least in those days (look him up on wikipedia), and who unravels a deadly mystery against all sorts of odds, in the process exposing the dark underbelly of the Raj. I have some issues with the writer's English: no Englishman in those days would have used the expression 'called out' to mean 'criticised', simply because it did not exist then, nor written 'he was likely sent to jail' (the word used to be 'probably'), nor 'he looked like he wanted to say something' when he meant 'it seemed as if he wanted to say something': these are all Americanisms from the social media age, four generations after a 1919 detective. And writing 'he was sat' when one means 'he sat' is downright wrong and silly. Also, a Bengali brahmin from a rich old Calcutta family with a first class law degree from Cambridge and a cut-glass English accent who passed the IPS entrance exam got his first posting as a mere sergeant in shorts, not allowed to sit down before his British superiors? when Satyendranath Tagore, the first Indian ICS officer, had become a deputy magistrate half a century ago?! But at least this writer took into account Jallianwala Bag, and the story is well told. I shall look forward to the next three in the Sam Wyndham series. The one book was written by an Englishwoman, the other by an expatriate Indian: I can only marvel at the dedicated amount of research both  must have done to get 99% of the period details right.

Finally, a book from a very different genre: Quest for Kim, by Richard Hopkirk. Those who have not read Rudyard Kipling's Kim and adored it lifelong as the finest book about India ever written in English will be left cold; so will all those who hate everything about Kipling without knowing much more than zero about him, but I am one of the lifelong diehard aficionados, and for like-minded people, I'd say, re-read Kim at once, then go and read Hopkirk's earnest, arduous and years-long labour of love to retrace Kim's steps across the length and breadth of India, and find out all he can about the Great Game and all the outstanding characters, old Teshoo Lama, Kim himself, Field Marshall Roberts of Kandahar the Jang i laat sahib, Mahbub Ali, Lurgan Sahib and Babu Hurree Chunder Mukherjee. You will be regaled and rewarded beyond your expectations.

I can't thank you enough, Pupu ma. Looking hungrily forward to what you will ask me to read next. Meanwhile, I am eagerly into Bending over backwards, by Carlo Pizzati, a very different kind of book again, and hoping to be much educated and entertained. Then a history of the British Indian army is waiting, along with a newly published collection of essays on the cimema by Satyajit Ray that Swarnava has kindly gifted me. What a feast! May God have pity on those who don't read books.

P.S.: I have linked some photos in the previous (travel-) post.  

Quick trip to Chail

I get very tired of sitting at home taking classes relentlessly for more than two months at a stretch (remember that I have no Sundays even, and I have stuck to this routine for twenty straight years now), and since my daughter was visiting till a while ago, I left Durgapur after a gap of four whole months. I took my mother along and went – where else? – to Pupu’s place in Delhi on November 29. As I have written before, I have been looking forward to wintering there, and I wasn’t disappointed first time round, Delhi still having a very mild winter at the time of writing, and a lot of sun and open air on top of that, along with a chance to sit out on the balcony every now and then.

At 3 a.m. next night, we set off in a hired car for Chail, which we had last visited in 2004, when Pupu was a child (though she still has a fair recollection), about 60 km from Shimla. You don’t have to visit Shimla to reach Chail, by the way, and we had been warned against visiting that now-overcrowded market town (Kipling must be turning in his grave) – you take a different route from Solan. The best time to avoid the terrible traffic snarls north of Delhi, our car hire agency had wisely advised us, was a few hours before daybreak, and so it proved. We whizzed past Sonepat and Panipat and Karnal and Ambala and reached Chandigarh by eight. The hill road starts minutes after you cross the turning towards Pinjore (of the fabulous Mughal garden fame), and within less than an hour after that we had reached Brahmapur, where we had stayed at the Whispering Winds resort en route to Kasauli in the summer of 2018. Then on to Solan and then Kandaghat, where, despite frantic but rather garbled instructions from Google Maps (that horrible accent!) we managed to lose our way and wasted nearly an hour. From Kandaghat the road becomes serpentine, with a lot of hairpin bends once you cross Shivphul, reminding you of the approach to Kalimpong; we were all a little tired and shaken up, including poor Bheblu for whom it was the first ever experience, being cooped up in a car and tossed about non-stop for so many hours, by the time we reached our destination, the Royal Swiss Cottages resort a little downhill from the erstwhile palace of the Maharaja of Patiala.

The last couple of kilometres were a nightmare for a car meant essentially for smooth highways, all bump and grind at a snail’s pace down a very narrow, wavy and rutted kuchcha road strewn with little boulders, so that I had begun to grumble when we finally came to a halt. Then clambering up a goat track very roughly hewn into the hillside for a hundred yards or so before we reached our room, and my own knees hurting like hell telling me how much my mother must have suffered. But I think we all agreed it was well worth it when we had seen the room and inspected the view. The last time I had stayed at a place like that was, I believe, at Rudraprayag in February 2018 – how the years have flown! – on a ledge overhanging the foaming Ganga just downstream of the sangam, and our accommodation this time was far more spacious and luxurious. There was a grand mountain vista right in front, and the rustling of the pine forest, even in the daytime, was like a distant storm. The wind was piercingly cold even at midday, but wherever the sunrays fell it was delicious, all the way into the bones. We caught a much needed nap that lasted beyond sundown. Young Kanishk Sen the son of the proprietor, who looks after the business, along with the service staff, Raju ji, Lata ji and Deepa ji, all smiles and eager helpfulness, gave us a very warm though informal welcome and a lip-smacking dinner. There was a young couple with their little son Rishi in tow in the next suite, both doctors in private practice in Meerut and evidently doing very well for themselves judging by their chauffeured BMW SUV, who were celebrating their anniversary. They got a bonfire going on the grounds and warmly welcomed us to share when we strolled down for a bit. Extremely well-mannered people, bringing up their child excellently, because we saw him enjoying himself variously without ever feeling the need to bawl or scream. Even their choice of music and the volume at which they played it left nothing to complain about. A blessing, because we know from long experience how bad fellow boarders can ruin your holiday.

The night was cold, the temperature going down to four or five Celsius, but I decided after some hesitation not to ask for a room heater, and in the event we were comfortable enough with all the quilts and blankets provided. A walk to look around the precincts in the afternoon with Pupu, which called for a bit of huffing and puffing, then Pupu got some work done online, ma sat out in the lovely private lounge for a bit, and I spent a couple of hours devouring a wonderful British detective novel set in Bengal 1922 called The Last Kashmiri Rose by Barbara Cleverly, written 2003, about which more later. We went to bed early, resolved to enjoy the pleasures of sleep for as long as we could, and in fact, though ma got up earlier, Pupu and I managed more than ten hours of the dreamless.

I had solemnly told Kanishk that I intended to ‘do nothing’ during the entire stay, and that is what I earnestly did the whole of the next day, determined just to ‘stand (or rather sit) and stare’. No better place than the mountains if you love them, and if you can find a place so beautiful as well as so free of noise and crowd and pollution. As Pupu said, every time we deeply inhaled, our lungs were being surprised by the sharp, exhilarating tang of what they had become quite unused to, namely fresh air. I spent several quiet hours simply sunbathing on the beautifully laid out wooden terrace. Dropping in every now and then, young Kanishk regaled us with stories about his ancestors, who were originally from Bengal, migrated to Kashmir in the era of the Khiljis, and became Himachali nearly a hundred years ago. We assured him that he was living our dream: I could imagine few better ways of ending my life than owning and running a property like this, taking in only very discriminating guests, while Pupu stays beside me and attends to other kinds of work. In a hundred little details, including signs put up here and there, we found evidence that some highly educated and sensible mind had taken care to plan the whole setup – ‘lose yourself in the hills if you want to find yourself’, said one, ‘green is the primary colour of the world’, said another, while another warned ‘do not waste food; remember, ten per cent of the world goes hungry to bed’.

The day passed like a dream, and like all good dreams, all too soon. I am glad now that so many dreams have become stored in my mind as so many happy memories: I can tell Wordsworth I know exactly what he meant when he wrote those last lines of Daffodils. The next morning, having given the palace a miss because we had seen it once earlier and Kanishk assuring us that there was no point visiting it again, we packed up in leisurely fashion, partook a brunch of very tasty sandwiches, packed into the car at around 12:30, stopped a couple of times for tea and snacks, and returned to our house in Delhi just after 10 p.m. We could have been half an hour sooner if we hadn’t been caught up in a nasty jam a little before entering the city limits. Oh well, you can’t have everything. On the whole, a lovely little getaway. I’ve already told Pupu, busy as she is, that we have to do it more often, and we have to find good locales a little closer home, not more than four to six hours’ driving.

For photos, click here.